


To Patch Up a Soul with Tape and Tears

by orphan_account



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 20:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3908776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could have laughed at the similarities between “demon” and “dæmon,” although he didn’t. Once you took away the latter, did you become the former?</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Patch Up a Soul with Tape and Tears

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to floralroyalty on tumblr for the inspiration and framework for this verse.

There was lots of screaming in the treatment center—so much, in fact, that most of the undead who had been there for long enough could differentiate between types of screams. There was the scream of those who and just found out they were zombies, the scream of those trying to hurt themselves for it, the scream of those coming back to themselves after receiving their neurotryptiline doses just a little bit to late; there was the flashback scream.

But the worst scream of all came when a newly medicated PDS sufferer realized they were alone.

It usually started wordless and fairly quiet, a confused whimper, a scrabbling of the hands. The poor, newly awakened soul would look around, slowly at first, and then with more panic, eyes pleading with doctors or roommates to stop this horrible practical joke. As no help came, the scream would grow in velocity and intensity, clawing its way out of the sufferer’s throat like an anguished animal itself, causing everyone who heard it to flinch away, either in pity, or reminded of their own loss. Eventually, the scream would take shape, fixating on a name. The name was never familiar to anyone but the screamers themselves, but everyone in the treatment center knew what it meant. The screamers were calling the names of their dæmons, who were nowhere to be found.

Kieren had screamed like that when he first awoke, of course, but eventually, he had stopped. Everyone stopped at some point. Usually it was because they were sedated. Kieren had been here long enough that he didn’t have to be sedated anymore. He was getting out soon, later today, in fact.

He was quite nervous about that, more nervous even than he had been at his first group therapy session. After the fiasco with Alex during yesterday’s shots, his hands hadn’t stopped shaking, and it wasn’t for lack of neurotryptiline. He was terrified of what his mother, Aurelio, his father, and Sarea would say. He wondered if they expected Pyrena to be with him. If they had seen other PDS sufferers, they would know that they were dæmonless. Still, it was one thing to catch a glimpse of a PDS sufferer without their dæmon, and quite another to get used to your son being so disfigured. No amount of cover-up mousse could hide Pyrena’s absence. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure whether she had come back. He’d thought he’d be able to feel it. Her name had been the first coherent word on his lips, before Rick’s, before his parents’ or Jem’s. But he couldn’t feel her anymore.

She had to be alive. The thought of an eternity without her (because they’d said he couldn’t age, so wouldn’t that make him immortal?) was more than enough to make the slashes on his wrists tingle with phantom longing, as though opening them again would do any damage. An eternity without Pyrena was a gaping hole; it was half of his body numb or missing. He couldn’t do it.

His hands had finally stopped shaking enough that he could insert the contacts and apply the cover-up mousse, although he didn’t feel much better internally. One of the caregivers poked his head around the doorframe to tell him that his parents had arrived, and he swallowed a lump in his throat. The man’s bulldog dæmon eyed him with cautious sympathy, before the two of them turned away to give him a few last moments to gather his things and himself.

The long hall where his parents had been waiting was empty, save for one other family in the process of reuniting. Kieren didn’t want to look at them, didn’t want to compare their reactions to his parents’, although it was hard enough to look his family in the eye as it was. His mother smiled widely, wider than he could remember her ever smiling, and then it twisted, turned to hysterical sobs. Aurelio, who had been sitting almost unnoticed by the leg of his mother’s chair, hopped the few short steps to her and pressed his small rabbit body to her leg, a trembling comfort. His father patted his mother’s shoulder awkwardly. He seemed to be holding it together, but Sarea shifted from talon to talon on his shoulder, fluffing her coal-black feathers.

“You look well,” said his father, offering a crooked smile. “I mean, we heard… things, but you look quite well.” His mother nodded in teary agreement.

“Well, you know, the cover-up mousse…” Kieren made a vague gesture at his face.

Sarea cocked her head, rustling her wings once more. “Where’s Pyrea, Kieren?” She and his father both craned their necks, looking behind Kieren as though they thought she might be concealed behind the doorframe.

Kieren had begun to shake again. “Oh, didn’t you… I mean, I thought they would have told you–”

“Oh, they did tell us,” his mother interjected. “They did, don’t you worry. We just thought that maybe…” She trailed off, but Kieren knew what she wanted to say. That maybe they were lying to us, that maybe you’d been reunited, that maybe this isn’t as awful as it looks.

The caregiver and his bulldog dæmon pushed apologetically around Kieren, and suggested that they start heading out to the car.

Seeing his parents again was only the first among a list of emotionally exhausting things that day. It was hard when his mother covered him with a blanket and told him to lie still in the back seat of the car while his father talked to Ken Burton. It was hard when she ushered him rapidly into the house. It was hard when Shirley Wilson and her terrier dæmon came over and chattered and fumbled with the neurotryptiline syringe. It was hard when he realized exactly why he couldn’t go outside. But the hardest thing to bear by far that day was when Jem came home.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, feeling ridiculous, miming cutting up his supper, when he heard the door open. There was only one person it could be, and he stopped his charade at once, tensing, feeling like he should run to her. Then inside door opened, and she stood in the doorway, and there was a hawk perched on her shoulder.

“Jem…?” He couldn’t find the words to greet her. He didn’t recognize the bird, which flared its wings and snapped his beak at him.

“I’m not coming in until that disappears!” she said, pointing at Kieren accusatorily.

“Get in here, right now!” their father called angrily, as she turned to march back outside.

“I’ll walk out, I swear! I’ll spend the night on a bench.” Sarea fluffed her feathers, and Aurelio thumped his hind leg on the floor in frustration. Jem’s hawk let out a screech that sounded far too wild for this enclosed space, and Jem slammed the door closed behind her.

“Jem–!” called his mother. Kieren got up. He couldn’t just leave this be.

“Kier, you don’t have to!” said his father, with frustration, but Kieren didn’t listen. It didn’t matter. He knew he was a monster.

His room was the same as he had left it, like his parents said it would be. The paintings were all there, mostly of Rick, some of Pyrena, especially from when he was younger and she could model whatever animal he needed practice sketching. Most of those were rubbish, but there was one from after she’d settled, where she was facing away from him in their backyard, but her head was turned towards him, sweetly, lashes lowered. He could barely stand to look at it; he felt that even his box full of mementoes from Rick might cause him less pain.

He was wrong, in fact; those stabbed at his heart so intensely that he felt there was little he could do now but try to sleep. He could hear Jem still banging around downstairs, but he was suddenly so exhausted that it didn’t matter. Flashbacks or no, he needed to close his eyes.

He woke from terrifying dreams of devouring human flesh, to Jem standing over him, which was similarly terrifying.

“What are you? Are you a demon?” He could have laughed at the similarities between “demon” and “dæmon,” although he didn’t. Once you took away the latter, did you become the former? Her tone was demanding.

“I don’t know,” he replied, and he sounded far more scared than he’d intended.

“See, my brother was a kind, gentle person. You’re a monster, a monster without a dæmon. You’re only half a person, and you eat people’s brains! Isn’t that right? What’s your name?” She stared down at him demandingly. His sheets were soaked in sweat.

“I’m Kieren.”

Jem laughed humorlessly. “No you aren’t. I don’t believe you.”

“That’s my name!”

“Prove it. Tell me something only my brother would know about me.” Kieren’s mind and heart raced. “Come on then!” Jem practically shouted.

“Um, ok… When you and Caedmon were little, when you were eleven, Caedmon would always turn into little tiny things, like bugs, and hide, and it would freak Mum and Dad out because they couldn’t see your dæmon, and they thought it wasn’t right.”

“Well everyone knew about that–” But Kieren wasn’t finished.

“So they tried all sorts of things, therapies, but they couldn’t get you two to stop. And they didn’t know why. But I did. It was because you didn’t want to be noticed. You thought you were strange, so you wanted to disappear. But I knew what would do it; I made you a hardcore metal mix CD. Mum went mad when she saw that, because of all the swear words, but it worked! And Caedmon started being a cat, most of the time, and I thought he’d settle like that…” Kieren stopped, thinking. “And then he settled as a mouse, and Mum and Dad got really worried again, but he didn’t ever hide like he used to. So it was okay.” Kieren smiled crookedly, just a small smile, but Jem was crying.

“You didn’t even leave a note, Kier!” She began to cry harder.

“I just wanted to disappear, when I heard about Rick. It was my fault he died–” Kieren's smile had disappeared

“That’s bullshit! He died in Afghanistan! The Taliban killed him!”

“I’m sorry, Jem, I’m sorry!”

“No!” she shouted, and picked up a glass from his dresser, hurling it against the wall. “You don’t get to say that to me!” She turned and ran to her room in a flash of dark red hair and a flutter of wings. Their father, awakened no doubt by the smashing glass, came out into the hallway.

“What’s going on here?”

“No need to be worried, Dad, he can’t kill himself twice!” Jem slammed her door, and their father sighed and turned back towards his room.

Kieren was still exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep. He wanted a breath of fresh air more than anything. They didn’t get to go outside at the treatment center, and now, here, he felt more closed in than ever.

He waited a few long minutes until he was sure everyone had settled in again, and then crept down the stairs. His night vision actually seemed to be better now than it was when he was alive, which seemed contradictory, what with his eyeballs actually being dead, but he wasn’t going to complain about not having to turn on any lights. He padded silently across the kitchen, and opened the back door. If he got to the back yard through the garage, the front door of which was closed now, no one would see him.

He slipped into the back yard, a silent figure in a hoodie, a black smudge in the 2:00 AM darkness, and breathed a sigh of relief. The air was refreshing, even though he couldn’t really feel temperature, and the silver of the crescent moon could still be seen. He felt drawn towards the low hedges at the back of the yard, though he wasn’t sure why. There was nothing much else to do out here, so he walked the short distance to them, and stood staring out into the dark woods beyond.

Something rustled behind a tree, and he tensed. He had no idea what another Roarton villager would be doing in the woods at this time of night, but if it was one, he was quite literally dead. For real this time, no do-overs. He thought about running back to the house, but decided against it. There was something holding him rooted to the spot, and he strained his eyes to see what had moved out there in the trees.

And then she stepped out into the open. Kieren felt his whole body go even number than it was already, and he gasped.

“Pyrena?” She picked her way through the leaves towards him, quietly, deliberately. He was trembling and reached out towards her, but he wouldn’t go beyond the hedges. Her lithe doe’s body cleared the one next to where he was standing in a single bound, and turned to face him.

“Kieren.” Her voice saying his name was like coming alive again, even if it wasn’t, quite. She stepped into his outstretched arms, and he buried his face in the fur of her neck. She exhaled softly, ruffling his hair with her breath. Then they both began to cry.

“I thought you were gone! I thought I would be alone forever!” Kieren mumbled into her fur.

“And I thought I’d never find you, or that you’d never come home! I woke up by the cave, you know,” she whispered.

“By the cave?”

“The bloodstains were gone but it felt like it had only been a day.” At that, Kieren looked up at the sky, and around, at the neighboring houses. He kept his hand on her–he didn’t ever want to be separated from her again–but gestured for them to move back towards the house.

“I shouldn’t have come out here at all– I mean, to find you, of course, was the best– but anyone could hear or see us. Come on.”

They slipped noiselessly back inside. It was only when they were halfway up the stairs that Kieren noticed that Pyrena’s made no sound on the wood floor. He turned and raised his eyebrows at her, a wordless question, and she shrugged her withers. Perhaps it was a symptom of being undead.

Kieren thought about going to Jem’s room, about showing her that he had a soul after all, about asking how and why her dæmon was a bird now, but he couldn’t bring himself to wake her. Better to show Pyrena to them all in the daylight. In the daylight, all the monsters disappeared.


End file.
